With not much going on in sports, anything about Johnny Manziel seems to pass for news

So he becomes a center of attention%2C again%2C during Southeastern Conference media days

Of course%2C he does little to escape the spotlight in attending the ESPY Awards on Wednesday

This just in: a 20-year-old college quarterback has apologized for oversleeping at a football camp because his cell phone died.

On the slowest day of the year in sports, the day after the All-Star Game, this passes as huge news.

I'm sure we can all agree that the Biogenesis suspensions can't come fast enough.

To be fair, the 20-year-old in question happens to be the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M, not just any old 20-year-old, such as, say, Bryce Harper, who is actually two months older than Manziel and still runs into the occasional outfield wall.

It also happens to be Media Days in the Southeastern Conference, an event that is accompanied by the breathless anticipation that much of the rest of the nation reserves for actual games. Then again, much of the rest of the nation hasn't won the last seven national titles in college football.

So when Manziel, who was born after Bill Clinton was first elected president, says things like the following, well, we apparently just have to stop what we're doing and listen:

"The spotlight is 10 times brighter and 10 times hotter than I thought it was two months ago," Manziel told ESPN on Wednesday. "I guess I feel like Justin Bieber or something. I never thought it would really be that way."

Neither did we. Then again, this is new for everyone, for Johnny Football, and for all of us. Never before has a freshman won the Heisman Trophy, as Manziel did last season. So never before has a freshman Heisman winner gone through an offseason like this, making headlines and acting like a young man who hasn't quite grown up and still wants to have some fun after winning the Heisman. Hence the lavish vacations and occasional celebrity run-ins and the self-induced problems with Twitter.

It's never a good thing to have to go on a national apology tour before you hit 21, but that's pretty much what Manziel was doing in Hoover, Ala., in front of so many cameras and notebooks and microphones that one might have thought Bieber was in town, or at least Lindsay Lohan.

"There's no excuse for it," Manziel said of leaving the Manning Passing Academy early this past weekend. "Absolutely my fault."

The camp announced he left because he was ill. Asked if he had a hangover, Manziel replied, "Absolutely not."

Then, on Monday, back in Texas, Manziel pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for his role in an altercation last summer.

That's a lot of attention -- and inevitable criticism – for one young man to handle.

"It gets to me a little bit, I'm not going to lie," he said. "I feel like, to be honest, I haven't done anything criminal this offseason. I haven't done anything like that."

Now there's a positive development.

"I've made my mistakes," he continued. "I'm still growing up. I'm still learning from that. At the end of the day, I'm going to continue to make mistakes and the big thing for me is to learn from them and not make the same one twice."

It also would be helpful if all the cameras and microphones went away, and he went away too, and we could start ignoring him, at least until football season begins. Yes, he's the Heisman winner, but he's also a kid. A sense of perspective wouldn't hurt here. Then again, he's the Big Man in the SEC now. Back and forth that conversation goes, with no easy resolution.

Problem is, he's not helping us leave him alone. After his news conference, Manziel jumped onto a plane bound for Los Angeles to attend the ESPY Awards on Wednesday night.

If we're going to try to ignore him, he's going to have to do better than that.